Of mud and pigs

By Lino Lista

Here I present the first part of a Scrutiny of the Traditio [Symboli] stage, excerpted from the secret catechism (“mamotreto”) in use in the early years of the Way.

The scrutiny [described here], concerning the mud and the blind man of John 9, which is the main theme of this [Traditio Symboli] stage and other scrutinies, was eliminated in the “corrected” version of the directory.

Kiko: Before the Way, were you blind? What didn’t you see?

Z .: Before the Way I was a bigot, because I was born in the Church and had a terrible moralism, a terrible fear of hell. I always had to present the good face, I never had a sin, the fault was always with the others. I did what I wanted throughout my life and in the background I never believed that I was a sinner because I was a good person and because I always went to Mass and I did not see myself as being blind. One day I heard the announcement [of the catecheses] and through that the Lord grabbed me; after listening to all the catecheses, after I got in the Way, the Lord made sure that through his Word, through the community, I began to see that I was a pig. The Lord permitted, while I was in the community, permitted me to sin in order for me to see how I was. Within the community, through the Word, the Lord has put me in front of my sins.

Kiko: [Tell us of] All the mud that was in you, the filth that was in you.

Z .: In quantity! I did not understand before the Way, why a married man went with another woman; I did not understand this. The Lord permitted me to commit adultery when I was already in the Way. He showed me that I am an adulterer, he has shown me that I am an egoist, that I love money; He showed me that I do not love anyone, my wife or my children, that i love only myself, that I always tried to take advantage of others. This made me see the Lord through this time, put mud on my eyes making me see that I’m blind so that I could see that He loved me like this, He did not get sick of my sins, He did not despise me, He loved me! And this I have seen in the community, because knowing my sins, the Lord has approached me through the brothers; He approached me through my wife and He loved me. The Lord approached me through concrete people, and he loved me well. Then I have experienced that God loves me as I am, reduced to being a wretch. […]

I highlight and comment on the following steps (which Kiko does not condemn after the Scrutiny).Before the Way, I was a bigot, because I was born in the Church and I had a terrible moralism, a terrible fear of hell.” It’s the usual debasement of other paths of faith in the Church. The Church produces bigoted and moralists obsessed with the fear of hell.

“The Lord has made sure that through his Word, through the community, I began to see that I was a pig.” The question arises to wonder in what Word, in what passage of John 9 or another, Jesus shows the evangelists that they are pigs. Perhaps the scrutinized man had in mind Mark 5: 1-20, not having understood that those are actual pigs in that passage.

“I did not understand before the Way, why a married man went with another woman, I did not understand it.” Since he did not understand the motives of adultery, it is clear that the scrutinized man did not do it before entering the Way.

“The Lord permitted me to commit adultery when I was in the Way.” The man then committed adultery (with the Lord’s permission, which is nothing new in NCW teaching) after entering the Way. And yet it’s gloating, since it means that Kiko’s mud has made a good result, for in this way he has known and recognized adultery and other sins. It should be analyzed where, in John 9, to which the entire Kiko “mud” story refers, it’s possible to infer that the Lord gave the man born blind permission to sin.

“[The Lord] has shown me that I do not love anyone, neither my wife, nor my children …”.Here’s another one who in Church had not seen [understood] anything (and he even went to Mass, he says!). Here is another man who did not love wife and children before entering the Way.

“Because knowing my sins the Lord has approached me through the brothers […]”. Sorry Mr. Z., but your confession is clear: before you frequented with the “brothers”, the Lord did not know your sin of adultery, other than predicting it, because it was not yet a “concrete fact”: you became an adulterer in the Way. That was your testimony.

“The Lord has approached me through concrete people.”“Concrete”: here is another NC expression of which the scrutiny is full. “The Lord through this time has put mud on my eyes.” “Through this time”? He seems to read Kiko’s words from the first volume [on the Initial Catechesis].

At the end of this post, I wonder:

About those who had to “correct” this trash: were they tempted to use a gas tank to make a nice bonfire with Kiko’s catechism?

Would this be the school in which the top people of the Way were taught, from the Twelve to the Seventy-two, including the itinerants?

Would this rubbish be a Catholic catechism with which they have been formed as “adult Christians” for decades, until corrections were made (and certainly beyond then, because of the oral tradition in use in the NCW)?

Would this be the fruit of the thought of an enlightened one inspired by the Holy Spirit who boasts “intellectual views”?

And would Mr. Z, in the end, be sent house to house to evangelize, talking about mud and pigs?

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself..." Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1998